Julia Gutterman is an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures at the University of Virginia. Her research brings questions of gender, disability and multilingualism to a wide range of German literature and criticism from the nineteenth century to the present. She is also interested in German Jewish literatures and translation. 

In 2023, Gutterman published “A Secret Thing: Forgetting the Author in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s ‘Das erste Gedicht’” in German Quarterly, and she has published translations of the work of 20th century German lyric poet Gertrud Kolmar and 17th century German poet and diplomat Georg Rodolf Weckerlin. 

Gutterman’s current research project concerns German literature and its intersections with disability studies. The project traces representations of epilepsy in literary productions from the 19th century to today. In placing the sociocultural history of meaning-making associated with epilepsy in conversation with disability studies, her project challenges preconceptions inscribed into the epileptic body, while also considering the place of epilepsy in disability studies.

Gutterman holds a Ph.D. in German literature from Yale University, an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Amsterdam and her B.A. is from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She teaches such topics as transnational and multilingual literature, lyric poetry, Black German literatures and German-Jewish literature and culture.